US/Taliban Relations and the Intervention of Domestic Politics

Abstract

The Al Qaeda attacks in Kenya and Tanzania brought global attention to both Osama bin Laden and to the Taliban. President Clinton responded with cruise missile strikes against Al Qaeda training camps near Khost, Afghanistan. This chapter looks at US/Taliban relations in the year after that strike. This time period was categorized by extreme pressure on the Clinton Administration from American feminist groups not to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The Clinton Administration was publicly supportive of those groups but, in the field, the priority was Osama bin Laden. The US and the Taliban met repeatedly to find a compromise that would allow them to expel bin Laden. There were Taliban officials who disapproved of bin Laden’s presence in Afghanistan, but domestic politics, and Mullah Omar’s intransigence, made it difficult to work with Washington.